Five Thoughts on The Flash’s “The Exorcism of Nash Wells”

Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of The Flash. This week’s episode is named “The Exorcism of Nash Wells,” where all the pieces kept moving toward the end of this season, let’s dive right in.

1. Evil Iris and Evil Kamilla

Right from the beginning, we are shown Kamilla’s fate, she’s trapped somewhere on the mirror universe (although not with Iris) and Eva McCulloch has a new addition to her team, she asks them to go and retrieve a ‘prismatic refractor’ which will help her escape from the mirrorverse.

This triggers the subplot of the episode, when they go to retrieve the device from Mercury Labs, a new Baddie appears, and it’s easy for Iris to call Flash for help as the meta is stealing exactly what she’s looking for, thanks to the police, Sunshine, a new Light-based meta working for Black Hole, is not able to steal the refractor. Here we saw a smug Evil Iris, confident of her deceiving abilities to retrieve the gizmo they need, and it’s that over-confidence what surely will give her away.

2. CCPD and the Sunshine bad

This week, the most prominent diverse character of the show came back, Chief Singh is back and he and Joe speculate about the possibility of a mole in the police force, at first I suspected that Singh could be that mole, but there’s nothing to prove that and it would be bad storytelling, besides, they have a mole infestation: Evil Iris, Sunshine as a spy, and possibly a police officer.

They decide to look after the refractor while ARGUS comes for it, given that the Flash is out of commission for the time being, and Iris shows herself more interested in the device than his husband, so Joe tells her to be focused on Barry, the distrust seed was planted last week by Wally, and now it’s Iris the one who keeps watering it.

3. Exorcising oneself’s demons

On the main plot of the episode, Team Flash discover that every Wells from the dead multiverse is connected to Nash, and if you ask, why is Thawne connected? They basically yada-yada it, but given that he was on the body of other Harrison, he can reach for Nash.

The problem here is that he is feeding his speed force (and himself) on Nash’s guilt, it’s revealed that he adopted Earth 719’s Maya, an Allegra’s doppelgänger, and she died following his mantra: the prize is first.

Team Flash, including Cecile, enter Nash’s mind and while Barry confronts Thawne, Cisco tries to help Nash to confront his past and admit, not to them but to himself that he has blame in the death of Maya and that there’s nothing much he could have done to prevent it.

This ties up to a recurring theme on The Flash, the guilt of our actions and the inevitable consequences of them. I’m no expert on psychology or anything like that, but I do think that when we feel guilt about something, ‘oralizing’ it, I mean, talking openly instead of keeping it inside of us is one of the best tools to help us heal, in this case, literally to kill our (or Nash’s) demons.

4. Wells, Wells, Wells

One of my favorite things to do every season is to speculate which version of Wells is going to appear, it’s a great recurring joke, the problem with that is that often, the one we are stuck with is not great. I know the fan favorite is Harry Wells from seasons 2 and 4, but my personal favorite is H.R. from season three, on the other side, I haven’t liked much neither Sherloque nor Nash.

And they managed to solve this problem in an ingenious way: now we have one body, but a multiverse of minds in one, Nash will be able to see other Wellses either to ask for help or simply for pure fanservice, maybe even another Wells could “take over” is the situation requires it, I’m all for it, multiple versions of the same person in the same episode.

5. Barry’s not the guy to root for right now

I have been complaining about Barry’s behavior all season long, and last week I talked about how I felt how he is out of his game, and this time, the writing team kind of confirmed me that they know what they are doing and that this changes are deliberate.

Continued below

Cisco and Caitlin gave Barry a “Speed Gauge” to help him measure his use of the residual speed force, and just as expected, Barry got to the red light at the most insignificant provocation from Thawne. He used Velocity-X to try to fight Sunshine despite Caitlin’s orders and thanks to that he got Frost badly injured.

One thing that redeemed him a little bit is that Evil Iris, in her role of good wife, tells him that he is limitless, despite not having Speed Force, he is not only Flash, but Barry Allen, and inspired by that, he traps Sunshine with a little bit of imagination, luring her to his office at CCPD and closing every access of light, proving that he is more than just a speedster. I hope that he comes back to being himself when the real Iris comes back.

BONUS: In the cliffhanger scene, Barry tells Team Flash that he has an idea on how to create an artificial Speed Force, he will use, instead of Thawne’s hate, his love and Nora’s annotations in her diary to create his own Speed Force.

And that’s it for this episode, it had great conflict and two storylines worth our time, what did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below, we’ll meet back until April 7 for our take on episode 616, “So Long and Goodnight,” thank you COVID-19.

Just kidding, this is a Pandemic and obviously it’s better that they halt production temporally for the safety of the hundreds of people involved in the show. Take care, binge other shows and enjoy your family, folks, right now I’m enjoying Anne with an E on Netflix with my girlfriend and am rewatching every episode of Bob’s Burgers.

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